The Needs of the One
by Entwife Incognito
Summary: Tag to 709 Copper Bullet. Jane's POV, mulling over Lisbon's words before they danced. A bit rambling and a bit angsty, as might be expected, but short. One-shot, barely 'T' for language and suggestion. Disclaimer: I own nothing about The Mentalist.


_**A/N A bit of Star Trek in here for those who recognize it. Spock and Kirk are a pretty profound story, too. Also a bit from a discussion about priorities, with LouiseKurylo here on fanfic dot net. Thanks to all ;-)**_

In the scariest moments, I wonder if I've made a terrible mistake. But I don't make thirteen-year mistakes.

Teresa is asleep in my bed. I think she put fourteen more curls in my hair. It was my pleasure to touch her, inside and out, through several orgasms to unconscious bliss.

She delivers me to that address regularly. When she turns on the power and I yield to the potent libido that drives her, I never have it so good.

"We're strong!" She's right. "Things are good. Very, very good." Her assessment silences my quaking heart with a warning finger.

That's the message for the night. Delivered with the sweetest gift she could give. Sure we'll dance in front of everyone. Two dances. We'll hold hands across the dance floor. We're out.

It's opium.

She's right. We're so good we're almost perfect. A position of danger that couldn't be more precarious. We carry the seeds of our destruction. I don't want to plant them.

I think of her blushing warm face, her half-lidded approach-me eyes when she delivers our very, very good assessment. She's beautiful, flying high, enjoying the full expression of being in love.

So, it isn't a relationship discussion, after all. My home between her legs is running the show. I want to be at the threshold. And relationship isn't separate from sex there.

I'm in love. Desperately in love. I wish I were flying.

The bare branches of the old oaks overhead rattle in the chill night air, but I open the window anyway. I can hear the dry grass rustle, and smell the dampness a few degrees from becoming frost. An owl hoots nearby and I hear the powerful swoop of its wings when it takes off for the field in front of me. It has an incredible wingspan. Some little rodent will breathe its last tonight.

I feel dead and scared. Shivering alone in the quiet moonlight.

I think she understands me. Knows who she's sleeping with. Remembers what drove my revenge. Remembers the day she forced me from fugue by making me open that door.

Teresa knows what that door meant then. It hasn't changed.

The door in Malibu is identical to the last door that opens on my terror of losing Teresa. There's no biofeedback for that. Everything runs on survival automatic as my mind recedes to let my body get the job done, save her, fast.

Does she love me?

I don't think she feels the quicksand. I don't feel anything else just this moment.

Her way makes me need to keep secrets, manipulate her. I don't like that anymore. She feels far away.

I don't want to lose her.

Shouldn't she recognize the mask of my smile, the falsity of my words? Instead, she accepts them as an offer to commit to the Teresa way, a perfect match to the cop way.

Don't think about the danger. Be happy in the moment. Nothing will happen to her.

And either of us could die tomorrow.

How does that work?

I know she's thinking of our place in the team. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

I toy with my ring. The ring that has meant so many things over the years. But always, always a reminder that I have been loved. I've been loved by a wife and a daughter, and loved them in return. No one throws away the last vestiges of that for . . . uncertainty.

I want to please her, make her happy without spooking her, crowding.

She is worth many adjustments.

But tonight I fall on my sword. Capitulate to her way of dealing with problems and conflict. These are the seeds of our destruction.

Even if I welcome the sacrifice, my biology won't allow this one. It pounds out doom with my panicking heartbeat.

Inside me, a once-destroyed man screams alone. He can't go back there. He needs Teresa. But he can only have her if he's a big boy.

She murmurs in her sleep. I miss her.

This is the wrong kind of post-coital thought. That's why I've left my bed for the table. Again. And, it's the wrong place.

Love is in my bed. I'll slip into her arms until I can make her understand me.

Sometimes, the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.

I understand her.

It's about the work, not us. She said so and I agree.

I've chosen her, us. It makes it easier to feel what's right.

She wrestles with two masters. Us. And her first husband, her job. It's not easy to tell him, I'm in a new relationship, more important, and you must go behind. I can't tell her to choose us. Or what to do about her first husband.

If our relationship is first, we resonate. We feel what's right for us. We're brave.

If we have other masters, we're roomies with benefits, pursuing otherwise separate lives, easier to spurn each other's needs. Maybe it's enough. My heart's heaviness says, no.

I don't know what Teresa will decide about me and the job. I'll be crazy worse if I can't be right there to protect her. I should be a big boy, but it's not going to happen, no matter how hard I try to pull it off.

That's what I'll tell her, even if she doesn't want to hear.

I'm weary and I need to go home. And there she is, burrowed under the blankets with only a muss of hair to find her.

I roll her out of the covers she's hogged and she grumbles and grunts. She doesn't start to wake until I slip in beside her and kiss her shoulders.

"Is everything all right?"

"I don't know."

"Hmmmmm?"

She doesn't want to wake up.

"C'mere, Patrick."

She opens her arms and wiggles outstretched fingers. When I move closer, they catch me. I'm happy to be pulled in. I snuggle into her neck and sigh.

"I love you." It drifts from her lips while she's already dropping back to sleep.

"I know. I love you, too, Teresa."

I anchor my edge of the covers under my hip to make it harder for her to steal them. It won't work, but it helps me get to sleep.

I'm really not alone anymore.


End file.
